We need your help

There currently is no U.S. or international agency monitoring the arrival of radioactive water from Fukushima along the West Coast. Although we don't expect levels to be dangerously high in the ocean or in our seafood as the plume spreads across the Pacific, this is an evolving situation that demands careful, consistent monitoring to make sure predictions are true.

We at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution already have dozens of seawater samples from the coast of Japan out to the middle of the Pacific, but now we need new samples—from up and down the West Coast of North America and anywhere else we can get them. The trouble is, these samples are expensive to collect and analyze. That is why we are turning to you, your community, and your social network for help.

If you want to propose a sampling location near you, all you have to do is raise the cost of testing and shipping (U.S. tax deductible donation of $550 to $600 depending on location) and we will send you a sampling kit with everything you need. We'll also help by setting up a fundraising webpage that you can email to your friends or post on your favorite social media site that will allow you to spread the word and track your progress.

Once you have your kit, sampling is easy (see video). When we get your sample, we will add it to the queue of samples to be analyzed. This isn’t a quick process (it takes 24-48 hours just to measure the radiation in a sample after processing), but we will fast-track samples from people like you. Depending upon how many are ahead of yours, however, it may take 5 to 10 weeks before we send you an email with the results and post your data on our interactive map.

We won't be able to take samples from everyone who wants to adopt a site right away because we have limited capacity in our lab and we want to make sure we have a good distribution of sample sites around the Pacific and over time. That's why we are asking prospective sample stewards to start with a $100 donation to seed their fund. We might also ask you to wait a few months before you begin fundraising or we might ask you to move your location slightly. But we can work that out with you.

If you're still interested, contact us with the details of your location and how to reach you so we can begin talking about how you can help.